Idlemind - nickcoster.com
Future gazing from a quiet corner of cyberspace.

I love my iPod as I have mentioned before. I now listen to it almost exclusively and whenever I am out and about with just my own thoughts with a podful of podcasts.

The thing that I have been quietly nervous about is that the amount that i have been using it exceeds the number of daily hours reccomended to get the most out of the iPod battery life. Before the podcasts I really had no expectation of listenign to more than a couple of hours a day of music. Now however i need to listent to that much just to keep up with all of hte feeds that I listen to.

As a result I have been seeing the battery time get gradually shorter and shorter, with the battery indicator sometimes displaying half full before suddenly crapping out at the most undesireable times. This is particularly annoying when I am out for a run, 20 minutes into a 60 minute course when suddenly my head is assulted with the silence of empty speakers.

These shortened times between re-fueling are now becoming a more noticeable issue. I listen to about 2 and a half hours of podcasting now before the battery winks out. At the end of the week I will be traveling overseas (more on that later) which would be a great opportunity to blast through some backed up podcasts while I am on the plane but if the battery craps out before we taxi out I will be very dissapointed , to say the least.

Mike (aka The Rock and Roll Geek),

I have been a regular listener to you show for a while now and I love it, particularly the Doc Neeson and the Chrissie Amphlette interviews, being from Australia myself.

But you gota go easy on the product endosements. This is the reason i left radio behind. Put the ads on the website, mention it once in the sho but then let it go!! If i wanted to listen to a vodka comercial i would be subscribing to the absolute podcast.

Help me stay subscribed. I’d really appreciate it.

–nick coster

With just 69 days to go I have just signed up for the Sydney Marathon (42.195km) for the 3rd year in a row. I have really just started running again with this event in mind. I was feeling pretty crap body wise, body stressed and struggling to relax on a run. After 3 runs in 3 days I can just begin to feel the cobwebs and bodily pollution clear out.

This morning I climbed out of bed and crossed the mental barrier of the cold and the dark and managed to get out for an 11k run before work. This is something that I have never really done in the past. I feel good now though so I think that it was worth it.

I have also been trying something else new. (more…)

I have discovered a new way of using my iPod. Before I begin I confess to being a big fan of shiny things. I am a sucker for beautiful design. This is even when my brain knows that I could buy something that has more storage, more features and a lower price but looks crap. I just can’t do it.

This is not to say that there is any thing wrong with the iPod. I bought the silver mini. It feels nice in the hand, the interface is simple and it holds as much music as I can listen to without getting bored. I am not much of a music fan. I tend to get a tune in my mind and I can play it to death, and I prefer to listen to one album at a time. For most artists this just doesn’t work when there are only 4 good tracks on an album, so they get ignored. I really like artist that build an album from beginning to end. This is the reason that I still love Pink Floyd. Their albums feel like a single song that goes from beginning to end.

The end result of all this is that I don’t feel the need to add a whole bunch to my iPod to listen to. So I have about 2GB floating around idle.

Last week I read a recent copy of Wired magazine and there is an article on podcasting. Now when I first read this I didn’t really think much of it. I figured it would be a great way for the shock jocks to publish a world of crap without having to worry about normal broadcasting laws.

Podcasting is basically recording a ‘radio’ style program save it as an mp3 so that it can be downloaded. Ok so far not a big innovation. The last big step that makes it difference is that these tracks are wrapped in a RSS feed, so that other applications can pick up the tracks and make them available as up to data content.

I followed the idiot-proof steps from the mag and started to download some radio feeds.

What I have discovered is a whole new world of content. Adam Curry who is interviewed in the article is amazing to listen to. He is an evangelist for this new format, but seems to carry his enthusiasim without boring the hell out of me. What is really cool is his belief in the value of the listener, and how important they are.

So far I have listened to Adam Curry, Dr Karl, Triple J’s - Hack show, Paris Hilton promoting her movie, movie reviews, American idol commentary, and that is all i have had a chance to taste so far. This makes my music redundant (at least for now). So now i am looking for the content that will fill my head. Now I love my iPod even more.

I hope to get back to more audio feeds. See ya!!